Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 2.pdf/92

 clause follows, in which he is not content with permitting, if by chance any money should be wanting (which, however, can be amassed in such quantities from the effect of the previous clauses, that it ought not to be wanting), but which actually (as if that was likely to be the salvation of you all) orders and compels the decemvirs to sell all your revenues, naming each item separately. And do you now read to me in regular order, the catalog of the property of the Roman people which is for sale according to the written provisions of this law. A catalog which I think, in truth, will be miserable and grievous to the very crier himself. He is as prodigal a spendthrift with regard to the property of the republie, as a private individual is with regard to his own estate, who sells his woods, before he sells his vineyards. You have gone all through Italy, now go on into Sicily. There is nothing in that province which your ancestors have left to you as your own property, either in the towns or in the fields, which he does not order to be sold. All that property, which, having been gained by their recent victory, your ancestors left to you in the cities and territories of the allies, as both a bond of peace and a monument of war, will you now, tho you received it from them, sell it at this man's instigation?

Here for a moment I seem, O Romans, to move your feelings, while I make plain to you the plots which they think have escaped every one's no-